Reflections
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: When Gibbs retires, Tony finds himself turning to his own reflection for guidance, searching among memories from an almost forgotten childhood to the here and now in an attempt to find the leader in himself that everyone needs. Character study.


_Reflections_

Tony could still remember the old mirror in his mother's bedroom, the one with the old wooden frame and the dusty glass. He could remember how she refused to clean it, and she would joke when he was younger that it was because it was so old she feared she would melt the glass if she sprayed the polish on it. Instead, she would run a duster over the surface, scattering the grey mist into the air and ignoring the fact that this only made it slowly resettle on a different part of the mirror. Sometimes it would find a new home on the glass it had just been disturbed from, more prominent and obvious in its place after most of it had disappeared. Sometimes it would settle on the frame, digging deep into the carvings that covered the wood. Sometimes it would disappear into the air, no doubt falling onto the carpet or the curtains nearby. Sometimes he would try and follow one piece of dust with his eyes, only to lose it when it got too confusing and his eyes began to cross. Sometimes he thought his eyes were too small to be able to keep track of anything so tiny.

Sometimes, he wondered whether he was too small to understand anything about the mirror in his mother's bedroom.

The mirror had shown him in his most memorable childhood days, whether they were good or bad. Whenever he was dressed up, he had seen himself reflected in the glass. On the morning of his grandmothers funeral his mother had dressed him in his smartest clothes, perhaps the first items of black he ever wore, and shown him how grown up he looked in his reflection. Of course he looked grown up, because he looked nothing like himself, he remembered. He was used to t-shirts and jeans, not dress shirts and trousers, so clean and pristine they were begging to be treated like the rest of his clothes, which saw the daily punishments of mud, grime and sweat. The smoothly combed hair wanted to be swept out of place as he ran through the trees, letting the wind destroy what hours of hair products had done to keep the stubborn flick at the top of his head in place.

He hadn't liked that reflection. It didn't feel like it was his.

But he liked the reflection of him on his sixth birthday. It was sad, because he knew that Nanna wouldn't be there to give him his five dollars and tell him not to spend it on candy, but also give him that wink as if telling him that was exactly what she wanted him to spend it on. But it was happy, because his parents (well, his mother) had let him invite all his school friends over to the house and they had arranged for a clown to come and keep them entertained for a few hours before they got a wonderful party tea. It seemed like a dream come true. And it was. Everyone was supposed to dress up as something different. He knew that Michael was dressing up as a fireman and Sarah was dressing up as a princess, but he wanted something better. So on his sixth birthday, he had stood in front of the mirror wearing his favourite new cowboy outfit, brought especially for his birthday party, thrilled to bits as he admired the matching hat and toy revolver that shot out a cork attached to a piece of string.

He felt ten feet tall that day, when his mother had crouched next to him beside the mirror and told him he looked just like John Wayne.

It was like he could only remember his childhood based on how it was shown in moments of reflection in the old mirror. He went to it when his mother died, spending hours watching his reflection as he lay under the bed. He was only ten years old, and while he was cramped under the bed, staring directly at his reflection and trying not to disturb the cat sleeping beside him, but it was better than being anywhere else in the house where his father would find an excuse to shout at him. So he looked dead ahead, imagining in the reflection that he could see his mother walked around the bedroom, laughing to herself as she sprayed on her perfume, put on her jewellery, talked on the phone, helped him with the buttons on his shirt, helped him with his shoelaces. It was easier to see things in the mirror than it was in real life. As time went on, he found that he could only remember what his mother's reflection looked like, not what she was like in the three dimensional world. Some people might find that worrying, but he found it was easier - she always looked happy in her reflection.

He could remember his eleventh birthday, disappointed and hurt when his father had forgotten his birthday. His mother used to write it on the calendar in the kitchen every New Years Day, and the two of them would circle it in blue, his favourite colour, counting down the months, weeks and days until April 12th. That year, he'd had to get the maid to help him get the calendar down from the wall, not quite tall enough yet, and he'd had to explain to her how to write his birthday in the date box and then circle it with his favourite colour. She'd been confused, he remembered, but she'd done it with him every year. But even though they'd done that, his father had still forgotten. He'd wondered the night before whether his father had secretly arranged a birthday party as a surprise, like Jessica's parents had done, but when he went downstairs in the morning there was no gift from his father and there was no party. There was only a birthday card and some new video cassettes from the hired help.

He'd put on a brave face and thanked them, but he'd quickly retreated into his parent's bedroom and to the old mirror. He hadn't been able to face his reflection that day, though, knowing it would only look like a pathetic forgotten child. He knew what that looked like, he saw it in movies all the time, but he didn't want to see it on his face. Even if he knew he was unhappy without his mother, he didn't need to see it in the glass. Instead, he stood to the side, admiring the intricate carvings of angels and horses dug into the wood. As he traced his finger over all the bumps and lines, he doubted whether he would be able to see his face in the glass. The dust settled stronger now than ever before, hiding all reflections. After all, he wasn't tall enough to reach any higher than his fingertips with the duster to scatter the dirt away, and he refused to let any of the maids clean it because, like his mother always told him, the glass might melt if they put the polish on it.

Then he was fifteen years old. His father had finally cracked and decided to remove any trace of his mother out of the house. He'd woken up one morning and found the hall full of boxes, the maid looking rather upset as she folded the flaps closed on the nearest one. In the others he saw thick lettering, marking each box for what it contained. Marianne's clothes. Marianne's jewellery. Marianne's music. Marianne's shoes. Marianne's clothes (again, she had a lot of clothes). Marianne's photographs. And then the gardener, obviously the only one strong enough to carry it, had carried the mirror down the hall. He'd asked Donny the gardener if he could help in any way, and once safely away from the house he'd requested that the mirror be kept. They knew that they couldn't keep it in the house, not when his father was insisting on a purge of his mother's memory, so they got in the truck and drove the mirror to his grandfather's house a few miles away. His father would never visit his wife's father now, and only Tony had visited the elderly man since Marianne's death, so it was the perfect hiding spot.

So he could then combine the visits to his mother's mirror with the act of being a good grandson - even more so when his father announced it was time (at sixteen) to move out before he resorted to throwing him out and his grandfather had taken him in. Of course, being away for college was the biggest transformation. He had looked into the mirror the day he left, knowing that he was a success with the ladies, but not always in all other areas. He looked into that mirror, and gazing back was a hopeful boy, filled with excitement about the prospect of being with girls and not having to sneak them out of the back door, playing football and basketball at college level and hopefully getting picked for bigger and better teams, becoming one of the greatest sportsmen of all time. He could stand before that reflection and imagine the scene behind him transforming from the upstairs spare bedroom he had claimed as his own into the parade scene of a stadium, banners, shirts, streamers…every available surface covered in his name. It made a nice change from the tiny engraving that his father had sanded over of his height in the kitchen back at his old house.

After college, he hadn't looked the same.

The excitement had gone. To start with, the hope had as well. His knee injury had been catastrophic, at least to his sports career. The doctors hadn't needed to explain in such detail that he would never play professional sports again, but they still had. When he was so young and so self-centred, he half suspected that they enjoyed giving him that news, putting it down to jealously. But that wasn't all that had changed. He wasn't that much taller, but he had grown more into himself, his teenage muscles more defined, stretching his t-shirt just enough to look impressive. He was better dressed, knowing that spending all his money on clothes might be rather feminine a concept to some, but that the well dressed man was one that women flocked to. He took more care to style his hair, even if the style was more of an organised chaos than a firm spike.

When he first looked in the mirror, it had been immediately after he'd arrived back from college. As soon as he was released from hospital he'd had to finish his exams, knowing that he was looking at an entire summer of physical therapy on top of finding a job, and he'd not been all that pleased when his room mate had pulled up the car outside his grandfather's house. Of course, he'd put on a grand smile for the ever aging man, showing the happy front that he'd perfected as he took in the welcome home banner that had probably been a strain for his grandfather to make. As he wrapped his arms around his grandfather's shoulders, he felt bad for not making the hour long trip home on more weekends than he did. He didn't remember him to be this old, this frail. He didn't have his wife to look after him anymore, and he didn't have his daughter either…it would turn to his grandson to look after him.

As he went up the stairs, his grandfather remaining in the kitchen, he'd found himself dropping the pleasant image. Instead, he finally focused on the fact that college was over, it was time to work now. But he'd never had a career plan that hadn't involved sports. With his injury, he wouldn't even pass for a decent personal trainer. It was this time that he found himself gazing into the mirror, but he'd recoiled as he found that his scowl was the one that his father often looked at him with. He'd never seen his father in the mirror, always his mother, so to see him in the reflection, and in his own features, even worse, was almost impossible to look at. He used to run away and hide under the bed, gazing into the mirror, when he used to see his father with that scowl…he couldn't run away from himself.

The next time he looked in the mirror, he was ready for his first day at his first job as a cop. He'd gotten an apartment in Baltimore, taking the mirror with him. The uniform gave him a sense of purpose, a sense of direction, that he hadn't had since sports had been taken away from him. Only unlike sports, his career would give something back to the people - that's what he'd always really wanted to do, give back to the people. Even when he wanted to be a professional sportsmen he was always imagining himself doing the charity events, promoting sportsmanship, showing kids the real meaning behind playing on a team.

For the first time that day, he saw a man in the mirror, not a boy.

But in becoming a man, he became many other things, all of which the mirror revealed to him.

He became a leader, shown after his first promotion to a new team whereby he'd stood a little straighter, his shoulders a little higher. He became a fighter, when he'd taken his first bullet, a scar on his right shoulder that he knew would never fade. He became a legend, with his first rewarded medal for achievement in the field, which he wore for only a moment so that he could see what it looked like - after that he hid it away in the box in fear he would damage the first commendation he'd ever received. He became a runner, when he had grown to comfortable in yet another position, and once he feared disruption he had run to yet another organisation.

No place bought more changes than Washington DC.

NCIS brought out new challenges, not all of them good. He remembered looking into that mirror on his first day, nervous at the prospect of the new boss he'd heard so many stories about. He remembered the night that Kate died, looking into the glass as he went home to change out of his wet clothes and seeing a man who had lost a dear friend. He remembered the night after he'd completed his undercover mission with Ziva, unable to see what had changed in himself.

But tonight? Tonight he could see nothing.

Of course, he could see the physical. The here. The now. That was undeniably clear. He could see that he needed to change his shirt, because there was a food stain on the right collar - this confused him, because he wasn't sure when the last time he ate was. He could see that he needed to shower, because his hair was stuck in place without any hair products - that, and he was starting to smell. He could see that he was wearing socks that didn't match. He could see that his left shoelace was almost unravelled. He could see that he was falling apart from the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he couldn't see the memories anymore.

He needed to see himself on the morning of his grandmother's funeral, sitting on his mother's knee with his hair in place, just so that he knew he could have a normal day out of his normal habitat, so to speak. He needed to see himself on the morning of his sixth birthday, dressed up like a cowboy, so that he knew he could be himself still. He needed to see himself under the bed at ten years old, so that he could see the look on his face and remind himself that he now had the power to never be that helpless again. He needed to see himself on the day he left for college, so that he knew he could have hope in the future and fight for his goals. He needed to see himself when he came back from college, so that he could see the scowl on his face and remind himself of two things; one, never to become his father, and two, not everything is within our power. He needed to see himself on that first day as Baltimore cop, so that he could remind himself to keep that enthusiasm for every job he did.

He needed to see himself as a leader.

But that wasn't right. Gibbs was the leader. Not him.

Gibbs isn't here now, the mirror seemed to taunt.

And then it made sense to him. He wanted to see a leader before him, and even though all thoughts were telling him that he should be seeing Gibbs, he couldn't. Gibbs wasn't the leader anymore. Gibbs wasn't here. Gibbs was gone. Gibbs had retired. Gibbs was in Mexico.

He wasn't.

He was still here. He was the leader now. That's why he could only see himself in the glass. He wasn't able to see the cowboy, the mommy's boy, the dutiful grandchild, the sports star, the broken man, the eager cop…he couldn't see that, because it had all mashed together. There was a part of him that still had the childish mind of a six year old, the adoration of his late mother, the respect for the grandfather that had never turned his back on him, the longing to hear a stadium of fans chanting his name, the scars of a past that would never quite heal, the energy of a new position at work. It was all the same man now. The leader.

The man before him in the mirror might have needed a shower, a change of shirt, matching socks, and to do up his shoelaces, but he was still a leader. He just had to rise above the now, above the hurt, above the loss, and take control. This ends tonight, he thought. Tomorrow, he would be the leader that everyone needed. Tomorrow he would take his place at Gibbs desk, knowing that he could pick everyone up, knowing that he had what it took to be what they needed him to be.

Because Abby needed the cowboy. She needed the fun and childish behaviour of a brother that he'd always been able to give her. And McGee needed the respect, because he'd grown into a fine agent, more than just a Probie, and while the nickname would never drop he at least deserved to know how capable he was of his own promotion. Ziva needed the broken man, to remind her that it was okay to not always be a hardened warrior, to show that not all scars could heal, so there was no use trying with all of them. Ducky, too, could share the adoration and respect, because like a grandfather he was always there with a magic trick and a story, something to remind you that life dealt you awful things but you could rise above them and carry on living. Palmer was yet to hear the stadiums chanting his name, but in time, perhaps he would grow into himself, and in the meantime, he could at least be shown that he was as much a part of the family as the rest of them. And Jenny…well, she was like the mother that he'd grown up adoring. She, too, was part of the family, and in Gibbs' absence she played as vital a role as a mother as Tony did as the new man of the house, so to speak.

Placing his hand against the cool glass, blowing softly against it to watch the dust scatter into the air, he wondered what the reflection would show him next time.

_Fin_


End file.
